GNT Group increases capacity with 3m euro laboratory investment

The GNT Group has invested more than €3 million in new laboratory facilities in Mierlo, in the Netherlands, expanding its capacity for natural colouring foods for the food and beverage industry.

Situated adjacent to the production site at GNT’s headquarters in Mierlo, the new laboratories are equipped with advanced quality control technology that will help GNT sustainably grow in line with the demands of its customers.

The site in Mierlo, near Eindhoven, now covers an area of six hectares.

Integrating the product development, process development and engineering functions will allow GNT Group to increase the speed of innovation, and will be a key step towards achieving the company’s plan for growth by 2020. GNT aims to grow sales by 5-10% a year over the next three years.

The company manufactures a range of ‘colouring foods’ – ingredients like beetroot and carrot that add natural colour to foods as an alternative to additives.

GNT Group managing director Dr Hendrik Hoeck said: “As a pioneer and innovation leader, our aim is to successfully support our customers in making the transition from additives to colouring foods in every product category. Our new facilities highly contribute to this goal and enable us to enhance our support to manufacturers at all stages of product development. This will further drive the concept of ‘colouring food with food’ to become the industry standard to satisfy consumers growing demand for real natural colour.”

The expansion adds to previous investment in the Mierlo site. GNT is also investing significantly in growing its research and development team, with 320 people currently employed across the group in total.

That number is expected to rise in line with the continuing success enabled by GNT’s innovation pipeline.

“As we are part of the bio-based economy, research and innovation is our key to success. In this respect, we are always looking for highly qualified people, wishing to significantly contribute to the innovation strength of the company”, Hoeck said.

As well as Mierlo, in the south of the Netherlands, the GNT Group operates a second production facility in Aachen, Germany.